Posted on 05/24/2010 3:41:32 PM PDT by BluesDuke
Of anyone who has ever played major league baseball, very few, in any era, have looked as though they really did play for the love of the game. We learn only when they are unable to play any longer that they really did love the game for its own sake, no matter the money, no matter the controversies. Some love it too much to keep themselves steady; some can't bear to let the world see anything other than the difficulty involved in playing the game in the inferno of the public eye.
When you lose someone who looked as though he really did play it for the love of the game, so soon after he was unable to find one more turn in the Show, you can't explain the wrench even if you can say baseball really was that much better for having him around. There are those players who are good for their teams even if they have little to nothing left of what made them major league players in the first place.
Jose Lima was one of them. He died at 37 of a massive heart attack Sunday. You may find few without a Jose Lima of their own; the one I remember best was the Jose Lima who pitched the Los Angeles Dodgers to their first postseason win since 1988. I wrote about that postseason win---the Dodgers' only such 2004 win, en route the St. Louis Cardinals shoving them out in round one---for Mudville: The Voice of Baseball. I'm glad to republish it here, to eternal Lima Time . . .
YES, WAY, JOSE!
10 OCTOBER 2004
Maybe Jose Lima was the only person in Dodger Stadium and on television who was not surprised that he came out to pitch the ninth inning, notwithstanding the intercontinental ballistic wing of the St. Louis Cardinals due up to hit. "Every time we've needed the big win," said first baseman Shawn Green after the game, himself still flushed behind his unshaven face, "he's given it to us."
He gave Albert Pujols a strike and then something to turn into a foul pop into the stands past first base, then wasted a pitch outside, before giving Pujols something to sky to deep right center field, Milton Bradley mounting his proverbial horse to take it in front of the warning track.
He gave Scott Rolen two high sliders just missing outside, to the identical spot, before throwing him a fast ball right down the pipe for a called strike, and then fed Rolen nothing better than something to hit right on the switch and right into Steve Finley's leather.
Then, he started Jim Edmonds with a called strike on the top shelf of the zone, before Edmonds popped it up skyscraper style toward third base. Adrian Beltre took it just around the bag, and Dodger Stadium went into the kind of meltdown a lot of Dodger watchers feared before the game that the Cardinals were bound to bury before the twilight was done.
Did it not figure that Lima would kick his usual postgame, post-win (his own or any other Dodger win) routine – hugging, high-fiving, fist-pumping, skip-dancing, smooch-on-the-cheeking with his teammates; windmilling the crowd with wide-open arms to ramp up the racket; planting a kiss on the cheek of his pitching coach and the Dodgers' trainer; bounding in and out of the dugout, around foul territory heel behind the plate, playing again to the crowd; crowing into field reporter (and former major league manager) Kevin Kennedy's microphone, like the kid who just received the keys to his own chocolate factory and a prom date with the number one dream girl in town on the same birthday – into manic overdrive?
"The fans deserve this," Lima whooped, still recovering his breath, the human 'toon who has just snuck a stick of dynamite into the opposition's evening picnic feed and slipped out of sight two seconds before it went KABOOM. "I love everybody. I'm pitching with my heart because I know they deserve it."
Lima is hardly the first player to tumble enough that a trip to the independent leagues was his last, best hope to get one more ticket to ride in the Show, but you would be hard pressed to find one who appreciated it more and made this much out of it. One year ago, he had started the season in the Atlantic League, a former 20-game winner who pitched so much with his heart he is said to have ordered his paychecks to go right to the clubhouse attendant, with instructions to lay on the feed for the guys who didn't make in one season what he'd made in his entire career to that point. Then he went to the Kansas City Royals for an 8-3, 4.91 season that got him nothing much better than a minor league deal with the Dodgers.
He ground his way onto the roster and figured to pitch out of the bullpen, as he did to launch the season. He started with two shutout innings to beat the San Diego Padres in relief in the third game of the season. Three days later he got a start against and beat the Giants in San Francisco. He got rocked by the Colorado Rockies in his next start, went back to the bullpen, then got an emergency spot start when Hideo Nomo cracked a nail and flattened the Arizona Diamondbacks.
"Whatever they want me to do, I'll do," he said after that game. "If they want me to be the bat boy, I'll be the bat boy." What they wanted, it turned out, was to keep him in the rotation and on the cheerleading line he made for himself on the home plate end of the Dodger dugout. And that is where he stayed, leading the Dodgers in wins and the world in enthusiasm. He makes Johnny Damon's Boston Red Sox "Idiots" resemble a cell of clinical depressives.
Now he made the Cardinals resemble canaries with an array of none-too-swift fastballs and rhumba-rolling sliders climbing the walls, slithering onto and under the shelves, and generally having them singing the blues. And, the greens, when Matt Morris – who pitched almost as effectively if not quite as effervescently – surrendered a pair of home runs to Green, the first Dodger baserunner on the day with a base hit up the middle in the bottom of the second. The first bomb was a rising liner that landed behind the fence and in front of the left center field bleachers to lead off the bottom of the fourth; the second, an identical liner the other way, clearing the fence and landing next to a set of stairs under the right field bleachers with two out in the bottom of the sixth.
Green's two belts made it impossible to hang the net result entirely on a slightly testy at-bat by Lima himself in the Los Angeles third. Alex Cora had gotten plunked on the back of his right hand to start the inning before Brent Mayne slashed a liner to right center pushing Cora to third. Lima came up to bunt and looked at a low ball one, before getting his bat on the ball with Mayne running on the pitch, bouncing it off the dirt in front of the plate and up into . . .
Was it Lima's hand? Was it his bat? He hustled out of the box on impact, with St. Louis catcher Mike Matheny hustling the throw down to second, perhaps thinking Mayne a steal attempt on the foul bunt strike. Except that Lima kept running, making it to first, the corner umpires apparently missing the actual ball-bat or ball-hand ricochet contact, Lima himself not necessarily aware of it in the action of leaving the box. (If the ball had hit Lima's hand as he left the box the rule book would have called him out.) Mayne beat the throw, the umpires huddled, the call stood up, perhaps on the shadow of a doubt, and the Dodgers had the bases loaded and nobody out and Steve Finley coming up.
One week after Finley had hit in Dodger Stadium in like circumstances, hitting a long fly over a drawn-in San Francisco Giants infield and outfield for a grand slam engraved in Los Angeles concrete and marble unto eternity, the erstwhile Diamondback struck again. This time, however, Finley cracked his bat apart in sending a liner down the line, past third, and into the left field corner, sending home Cora and Mayne and parking Lima on third. "Delivering the package the contents of which were shattered," cracked Tim McCarver on the Fox telecast. That was good for an early enough 2-0 Los Angeles lead, before Morris swished Beltre to contain the damage.
The Cardinals gave Lima his testiest time of it in the top of the fifth, when Jim Edmonds, who had had one of the two St. Louis hits off Lima to that point, laced one into center field for a hit and the third Redbirds leadoff baserunner in five innings. Edgar Renteria flied out to Bradley in right and Reggie Sanders worked Lima to a 2-2 count before fouling out to Green at first, but Matheny cued one up the middle and slightly left for another hit.
Then it was Morris's turn to hit. The pitcher actually managed to work Lima to a deuces wild before he whacked a broken bat grounder to third. Beltre snatched it up to see Edmonds stopping right in front of him. Well, hel-looooooo, there! Beltre seemed to say as Edmonds froze on the spot, Beltre practically strolling to the base for the inning-ending force out. It was the only time all night the Cardinals sent more than four men to the plate in any inning.
Typical of the way Lima worked was his tangle with Larry Walker in the top of the sixth. Walker had spent the stretch drive since his arrival in a deal with the Colorado Rockies proving he was no mere Coors Canaveral launcher, and he had helped wreck the Dodger part in the first division game in St. Louis with a pair of bombs, but now he had worked Lima into a 2-1 hole, swung on and missed one that Mayne behind the dish dropped off the plate, and then looked helplessly at a shivering slider crawling along the inside corner for strike three called. "Teasing to freezing," McCarver called it. Then Lima jammed Pujols into a pop out to shortstop.
Would Jim Tracy let Lima ride it out? He had Yhency Brazoban, the rookie setup man in waiting, throwing in the bullpen throughout the seventh. Lima got Rolen to ground one up the third base line so slow that Beltre had to sling it on an angle to first just in time; he blew Edmonds away on one called strike and two riding swinging misses; he walked Renteria but got Sanders to send one in front of the right center field track that Bradley and Finley approached before Finley one-handed it.
Tracy had Eric Gagne working the pen in the eighth while Marlon Anderson pinch hit for Morris with one out and grounded out to second, before Tony Womack battled Lima into the first Cardinal base hit since the fifth and Walker likely to send Lima out of the game if he could cash in at last. But Walker grounded the first pitch on the hop up to Green, who stepped on the bag to end it.
Even with Gagne sitting down in the pen as first Cal Eldred (a leadoff hit by Beltre) and then Steve Kline (a pair of shaky groundouts to Womack at second, bobbling before throwing out Green and mishandling before nipping Bradley by a step and a half; a bouncer behind the mound which Womack charged to throw out Cora on the bounce) took care of the Dodgers in the bottom of the eighth, it all looked as though Lima would hand off to Gagne for the ninth. He even sat down the far end of the Los Angeles dugout with all the look of a man who had just finished his evening's work whether he wanted to or not.
Not a chance. Not this night. Not when he was going to secure the Dodgers' first postseason win since the one that battened down their 1988 World Series conquest.
"They believe in me!" he whooped after the game, knowing well enough that nobody doubts he believes in them, too. He could have been talking about his manager and pitching coach and mates as much as he was the Dodger Stadium audience. Not to mention the Cardinals themselves. "We had a lot of trouble getting to the top of the ball, made a lot of outs in the air,'' said La Russa after the game. "He did a very good job."
That, about a fellow who spent the single most important night of his baseball life to date doing something formerly tied to names like Koufax and Hershiser and Podres and Labine, was like saying Romeo crashed a dance, met Juliet, ran off with her, and the two crazy kids died. And there's no room for anything like that when the clock strikes Lima Time.
Lime time. Believe it!
One of my favorite characters in sports the past 15 years. Jose always seemed to be having fun.
RIP. Loved Lima.
He was, indeed, good for your team even when he couldn't find the strike zone with a compass and a guide dog.
As a Mariner fan, I mainly know of LimaTime! from his appearances on the Jim Rome radio show.
He always made me want to watch his next start, no matter who he was with at the time. He loved baseball. Wasn’t he playing in an independent league a few years ago?
Just read the rest of the article you posted. Love how it emphasized his trip to the indy league.
Sports needs more guys like LimaTime! Believe it!
Real sad part---he had just spent the weekend with his son, both at the baseball academy he set up in southern California. His son's last memory of father will be baseball together, and that's sometimes a lot more than many sons get to have of their fathers.
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